Another Beautiful Day

So starts another beautiful day here in this new life which is so completely comfortable. I was walked out to the chicken yard by the two cats who were playing together all the way and the two geese who were trying to get a little of the chicken bucket action. The chickens flooded gratefully out of their coop and did some low stunt flying around their yard, I guess they are still only adolescent birds after all! The sun is just appearing over the trees, there's a soft breeze, the goldfinches are making a ruckus in the thistle and the girls are still sound asleep. Bliss, in other words.

We were off-island this weekend to see our old SMA buddies L and A and their sweet little boys. It couldn't have been a more American style backyard barbeque and although everyone seemed at ease it was still a little weird to see these guys out of Mexico. It was like their auras were flashing morse code about needing to get back to Mexico or something. Not that I can see auras but you know, you could just tell.
We also did some poking around at kitchen stores to get some ideas for countertops and layouts. We did come out of it inspired and with a fresh bead of energy to get to work on the place. We also bought some fancy dishwasher drawers to use but canceled the order when we got home and read some reviews about repair rates and quality. It was a sexy moment though, the thought of those fancy-pants appliances. In any event, we've got an almost complete floor plan for the space now that feels really good and functional so it was all worth it.

The girls are doing great. The Bunny is so excited about getting back to school. We bought her the typical batch of pencils, erasers, folders emblazoned with Miley Cyrus etc. and she spent a couple hours arranging and rearranging her pencil box and backpack. She has been assigned to the teacher she most wanted and drew this adorable picture for her, telling her how she'd been praying to be in her class. The spelling is heart-stoppingly atrocious but it's cute and I figure it gives the teacher a good heads up on where to start.
I had some parental pangs of knee-jerk "Hey! What's my brilliant kid doing in that class??" when I saw that hers is the split 1st/2nd classroom. Seeing as she's already done first grade twice but last year's teacher assured us she was head and shoulders above most of the class in reading and writing and basically everything but math it struck me as worrisome that she'd be back in a classroom, again, with kids that may not know how to write all their letters yet. And since she's one of (if not the) oldest kids in her year it also seems like an odd decision to put her in a room with kids who may be as much as 2 full years younger. So I will contact the teacher and ask these questions, but the Bunny is so over the moon happy about this teacher I'm not inclined to make a real stink unless the teacher says "Oh I have the class for cut-ups and dopes and she'll fit right in/she's there to be an example."

The Raccoon meanwhile is in preschool a couple mornings a week and LOVING it. Her best mornings are those when I ask her if she wants to go see Miss Summer. And this weekend she started using her potty! I honestly can hardly believe it though I hope my incredulity isn't showing. She just seems so young to be there. But she went to school in undies yesterday and did very well apparently until after lunch (not too surprising). We just bought another mega pack of dipes of course but I'll happily donate them to the Family Resource Center if she sticks with it. And her birthday is coming up. She does love her buddies at school so this year I don't think I can shrug off a real party. The Bunny has been buzzing around with her clipboard for weeks asking me if we should go with chocolate or vanilla, kitten theme or puppies, in the house or outside, with the water slide or no. I am a little hesitant to invite other toddlers over to our so-not-childproof home but it does feel like a bit of a failure to do this at a local park. So, TBD.

Post Marathon Void

Did I really finish a marathon? Can I even claim to have run it seeing as I had to walk so many stretches of it? That was it? If I could do it, anyone could, nothing special. I guess it's a familiar sense of let-down to anyone who has been preparing and waiting for something exciting to happen after the event is over and unfocused life resumes.
It reminds me of childbirth, you focus for 9 months on this moment that you suspect may be to most difficult ordeal of your life, physically, emotionally. Then it happens and in the moment you're there, living it, getting through it. Maybe it doesn't go as you had hoped but there is little hope of fixing it in the moment, you just have to adjust to endure it. And then suddenly it's over and you're on the other side. You're a new person or at least you're told that you are. But life keeps on rolling. Maybe you get a day off, the rest of the day anyway, maybe the day after. But then, before you've had time to reflect on what just happened, there are things to do, new responsibilities to accept and you're off. And all that preparation seems like it was a lifetime ago, did you really even do it?

So now what? Well, I've got a list of course. During all those many hours of plodding around the roads I had many ideas come and go about what next. Let's see

• Get certified as a lifeguard and help out at the pool
• Focus on Taekwondo
• Meal planning
• Take the Bunny to see Wicked for a girls' weekend in Seattle
• Watch every soccer game
• Pick as many blackberries as humanly possible
• Learn how to can food
• Pick all the peaches and plums before the critters do
• Help the Raccoon get out of dipes
• Spend more time on the boat
• Go camping with the kids
• Do more bike riding with the Bunny
• Ride my own bike w/the trailer more
  
• Focus on strength and toning losing about 20 pounds in the process
  
• Volunteer at school
• Take the EMT training course
• Finish the freakin' house!

That last one needs it's own special list. My Dad has been here for a little over two weeks and in tat time he has been busy improving our comfort levels significantly. He's built nesting boxes for the chickens, a treehouse and a seesaw for Chiara, he's built me a cabinet for my fancy wall ovens and helped us finish the last bit of the deck which had been untouched since last summer. He hung towel racks that had been in boxes since last fall and installed netting over the chickens to dissuade the eagles. All of these projects had been languishing hopelessly and now they're done! Now, can Dh and I keep the momentum going? We don't have much a of a track record. Before we had the kids we could grind out some real projects and did, but that was a long time ago now and our rhythm is way off.
But here's a list, just to help me focus;

• Design and build posts/bookshelves for the living room
• Sand and refinish the basketball court floor
• Install the floor
• Finalize the layout for the kitchen
• Build the counterspace needed
• Install the cooktop
• Find a better kitchen sink and reinstall with sound plumbing
• Rip out drywall ceiling in kitchen, rewire as needed and install tongue and groove/beadboard
• Choose, order and install trim on indoor doors and windows
• Choose order and install trim for exterior doors and windows
• Paint exterior
• Rebuild missing gable on front of house?
• Build raised garden beds, in back for herbs and lettuce, in front for everything else.
• Build garage/barn
• Finish getting mega trash pile to dump
• Get rid of the Pinto
• Find appropriate hardwood for stairs and install
• Install railing on stairs
• Recarpet upstairs
• Rip out crap tub and toilet from girls' bathroom and install decent shower.
• Build a dock for the pond
• Make decent paths to the front and back doors
• Build walls for pantry and broom closet
• Reconfigure laundry area to make space for folding clothes
• Find and install woodstove before we need it
• Figure out a convenient place to store the wood for it
• Build the half post/bookshelves for both entrances
• Get the Raccoon's bedroom ready for her to use
• Paint fun kid stuff on the walls of the playroom
• Make the downstairs guestroom into something functional
• Install pedestal sink in ds bath
• Finish pocket door
• Install doors on interior doorways
  

I'm sure there is more.

Marathon Story

Thank you all for all that awesome support y'all were sending out on Sunday!!! I felt every drop of that was coming our way and it made all the difference. Seriously, that run was hard. HARD. Really super unexpectedly beyond my wildest dreams hard. I mean, after my 21.3 miler training run that was so easy I seriously felt totally confident and like the marathon would be exhausting but basically totally doable and pure fun. But, in the real live moment my IT bands started locking down on me, first one side then the other at mile 6. Six! 20 miles to go. Twenty. Twenty miles.

I was thinking, "Really? Now? Here? On the Golden Gate Bridge? The part of the run that I was most looking forward to and my knees are locking up here and being all distracting and sinister?? Honestly?"

And my knees were like, "Yeah sure, why not party girl?"

And I thought, "But, this is my marathon! My marathon with my dingos and I've been training forever for this day, today and I want it to feel easy like I planned for and trained for!"

And my knees were like, "Yeah well whatever, this is how it is, suck it sister."

So I sucked it. First I had to stop even pretending that I cold run downhill at all, let alone like Jo who ran down hills like she was a stream on her way to her ocean debut. Then I had to admit that walking a minute at each mile marker wasn't going to be enough walking and that the sooner I started walking enough to feel like running the better my chances were of finishing in time. And so I walked a lot and limped a lot and stopped and stretched a lot. And it was cool. I walked backwards down the hills. I stopped at the bacon station. I ate a gu that had been dropped on the ground. I nearly cried when I found out the medics had biofreeze I could use. I talked to people who needed encouragement and thanked people for encouraging me. I smiled the whole way. I finished and I even pulled off a real live sprint to the finish wherein I passed a bunch of people and felt really good and like I won and I just barely kept myself from bursting into happy wiped out exhausted tears as I bent forward while a volunteer placed that medal around my neck.

And you know what? Right alongside the feelings of pain and denial and fear that it wasn't happening the way I wanted it to I was exactly to the same degree totally thrilled, exhilarated and overjoyed that I was there, running my marathon with all these other incredibly dedicated people, many of whom were sucking it as hard or harder than I was, all together winding through my hands down favorite city in the world for twenty six point two miles. It was awesome, fantastic, overwhelming and humbling and sweet. I giggled a lot at the absurd and fabulousness of being both sides of the coin at once and being fully aware of that. It was the cleanest experience of the yin yang I've ever had. Like, now I get that, I get the whole yin yang thing. I kind of got it before but during the race it was like I was running in a hamster wheel of yin yang and the black and the white just blurred together so there was no separation, it was just all complete.

And, despite the stupid pain I was experiencing there was one thing that rocked out completely. I am a hill climbing machine! Oh yes. I did not feel one iota of extra exertion on any of the up hills, I felt like everyone else in the race had been slowed down to half speed and I was the only one who still got to go at a normal speed, or even faster. Even when my legs were so sore it was like the pain was magically erased for going uphill. That was sweet, I just wish the whole race had been uphill!

Okay, the wide world of housework can wait no longer. And I haven't even gone on and on about how much I loved hanging with the dingos. It was the best time I've had since I can't remember. So many moments fighting to keep food from flying through my nose, such sore abs. Such good times.

More recent pictures

I hardly have time to type 100 words let alone 1000 so here goes:

My birthday present!

 
 
 
 

Happy times

Last night while I was washing dishes we pumped up the volume on the Bunny's Hannah Montana channel and the girls danced around the kitchen. Then we all danced together to the new pop version of Kiss the Girl. It was just one of those moments that was such pure joy, everyone singing, giggling, the Bunny twirling around me and Ali G just throwing her head back,bouncing on my hip, a huge smile on her face. It was the kind of thing you see in some schmaltzy family movie but it was real, in my life, and it was awesome.

The Joy of Running

You know, despite the fact that I've been blissing out on runs for the better part of a year now I still can't quite believe how much I enjoy it. It's such a simple thing to do really, just put on running shoes and go, so why does it feel so complicated when it isn't happening?

This week's log run was 17 miles. That sounded like a lot a lot before I went and I was kind of nervous about it even though last week's 15 miles went smooth as silk (until afterward but that wasn't really running related). Anyway, this week dh is out of town so I had our babysitter over and got a later start than usual, 8:30 instead of 6:30. It turned out to be a perfectly comfortable time to go. In fact, having the sun just a bit higher in the sky made me less concerned about getting clipped by a car since it was past the blinding time. And although it was the sunniest most beautiful day imaginable it wasn't too hot at all with the cool breeze coming in off the Strait. My route took me through the wide open farm valley in the middle of the island down to False Bay and then through some forested bits and back to town. In fact, the island is beginning to seem a little small. My relationship with this place has deepened with all the time I've now spent covering it on foot. There are few roads that I haven't run at least portions of and I've pretty well covered the eastern side of the island now. I'm planning on hitting the west side soon but it is quite a bit hillier so I'm still a little unsure how to approach it. The distances are longer and the hills bigger but I guess I'm almost ready to go for it, I mean 17 miles wasn't really hard, it just took a while.

While I'm out running I am sure that I will not stop after the marathon, it feels too good. But I do worry that it will be somehow harder to justify the time away from family if there is no big deadline out on the horizon. I guess we'll see. I'd like to start running on trails. I haven't done much but the idea of running through shady forest with pine needles cushioning the way sounds about like heaven, doesn't it?

We just had our friend Joan from Mexico come and visit. She is such a great person. She's 75 and full of energy and joy. Really brimming. She is so active and so interested she's just totally inspiring. While she was here she took my bike out a few times and each time she returned with a big old smile. She was great with the kids and helped out enormously. I feel we are so blessed to have her in our lives, I love that she shows the girls an alternative style to that of their blood grandmothers who love them but somehow seem to have failed on joyfulness.

Meanwhile, the Bunny has learned to ride her bike from start to stop all on her own. It is a joy to see her zipping around and especially to see her enthusiasm for it overriding the usual drama that accompanies any bruise or scrape. Her elbows and knees took a beating but she for once didn't mind at all, as long as she could keep riding! She's also shown herself to be an able businesswoman, she's raked in about $45 at her lemonade stand over the course of only maybe 4 hours altogether. Yesterday she rewarded her efforts with a stuffed animal she's wanted for a long time but she says she'd also like to put some money in the bank too. WHat a girl!

Ali G is continuing to be as happy and curious and adorable as ever. We have been to the beach a couple times this weekend and it's been lovely to see her getting used to the sand between her toes and the sharp coolness of the waves splashing her little legs. And now, speak of the devil, I hear her awake on the monitor so this will have to suffice for May!